About

Dide, pronounced like Didé or D-Day, is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, writer and composer-musician.

She won the Society of Women Artists Karin Walker Young Artist Award at the Mall Galleries and was selected by the Royal Society of British Artists as a Rising Star in 2023 only four months after completing her first portrait and again in 2024. She was also selected by the prestigious Women in Art Prize, preselected by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the New English Art Club, and long-listed for the Aesthetica Art Prize; won the Waveney & Blythe Arts Highly Commended Curator’s Award, the Drake Arts Award and the Arts Territory Award; was mentioned in the Ashurst Art Prize; and has work included in the New Museum of Networked Art and English National Opera’s Assistant Director Chris Hopkins’ show ‘Impressions’. She has been awarded residencies in Argentina, Japan and Finland, and has exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally, including in Sapporo, Venice and London, where her work was recently chosen by preeminent art critic Anthony Fawcett, who worked with Warhol, Hirst, Emin, Ono, Koons, Saatchi and many more. Despite being entirely self-taught in art since the summer 2020 lockdown, she is already in art collections including work by Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk and others. She is known for her portraits, and for hiding poems in ink or UV light in her oil paintings or wall-sculptures with accompanying musical soundtracks.

Her debut poetry pamphlet Growing is published by Broken Sleep Books (https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/dide-growing), and her debut poetry collection Making Sense by Verve Poetry Press in April 2023 (https://vervepoetrypress.com/product/dide-making-sense/?v=79cba1185463). She has been reviewed in The Poetry Review and published in The Rialto, Ink sweat and tears, Propel Magazine, Popshot Quarterly and as Editor’s Pick by the Bath Award among others, and won the Arvon Mentorship Competition. Her writing has been called a ‘winner’ by DBC Pierre, winner of the Booker Prize, one of the UK’s biggest literary awards, and compared to Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides. She has created a commissioned poetry film for Waveney & Blythe Arts and features on Ipswich Arts’ film, both on YouTube.

She has composed music for MIT professor Asegun Henry’s periodic table sounds, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Centre whale-song, Mind charity, the Alde Valley Spring Festival, Royal Ballet School, London Contemporary School of Dance, Philharmonia Orchestra members, relaunch of the Brambly Hedge book series, amongst others, and taught at Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh Music at Snape Maltings. She has also invented a new way of composing music, currently titled ‘Sound Scripts’ or ‘Literary Serialism’. She has performed internationally, from the Berliner Philharmonika to the Royal Festival Hall.

She won scholarships and grants to study music at the Royal College of Music JD and philosophy at the University of Cambridge, whilst simultaneously visiting the Lausanne Conservatoire of Music in Switzerland. She won an Isaac Newton Bursary, an Instrumental Award Scheme Scholarship, a Dance and Music Scheme Award, an Award for Young Musicians’, a Tom Acton Trust Award, a Royal College of Music Bursary and the Freda Dinn and Ida Mabott Violin Prize for violin and composition. She studied violin with Jascha Heifetz's protégé Pierre Amoyal and is studying singing with world-renowned opera singer Yvonne Kenny.

She currently divides her time between her own creative careers and occasionally translating/editing freelance, although her main income is as a painter. She has studied eight languages and has lived all over the world. She has many interests, from dancing, sports, film, politics, economics, science and psychology, to knife-making and forging. She has made knives on a select commission basis, having been trained by Butley Creek Forge, who stock a range designed by her that weaves poems into knife handles.

She has been featured in The Sunday Times, on regional TV, on regional radio, at the Royal Festival Hall, Finnish press and local press.

SELECTED RECENT news

2024 – Plates with Purpose - Make for Peace exhibition, Messums, Tisbury

2024 – Art on a Postcard for International Women’s Day, Bomb Factory, London

2023/4 – Aesthetica Art Prize longlist, York Art Gallery, York

2023 – Women in Art Prize selection, Roundhouse, London

2023 – Society of Women Artists (SWA) Karin Walker Young Artist Award, Mall Galleries, London

2023 – Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) Rising Star, Royal Over-Seas League, London

2023 – New English Art Club preselection, Mall Galleries, London

2023 – Royal Society of Portrait Painters preselection, Mall Galleries, London

2023 – Debut poetry collection Making Sense published by Verve Poetry Press (press and festival) https://vervepoetrypress.com/product/dide-making-sense/?v=79cba1185463

2023 – ‘Work-in-progress’ exhibition, and Butley Mills Studios and guests exhibition, both at Artspace

2023 – Group exhibition, The Craft House

2023 – Suffolk Open Studios exhibition, Ballroom Arts Centre

2023 – ‘Unconsumed’ exhibition, The Shoe Factory, Norwich

2022 – Propel Magazine feature, edited by Jeremy Noel-Tod, poem ‘Dead fox’

2022 – Anthony Fawcett’s choice at the ‘Vogue’ exhibition, Boomer Gallery, Tower Bridge, London

2022 – ‘Celebrating 70’ exhibition for the Queen’s Jubilee

2022 – ‘Wild Relative’ art, music and poetry exhibition, Ballroom Arts Centre

2022 – Debut poetry pamphlet Growing published by Broken Sleep Books https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/dide-growing

2022 – ‘The Artist’s Cloth’ art and music exhibition, Artspace

2021 – Tentacular Magazine feature, poems ‘Playing Sims’ and ‘=’

2021 – Popshot Quarterly Magazine feature, poem ‘Dirty washing’

2021 – ‘How do clothes define us?’ art and music exhibition, The Bank Arts Centre

2021 – ‘The Canvas Project’ exhibition, Tebbs Gallery, London

2021 – Butley Mills group exhibition, Artspace

2021 – ‘Elemental’ art, music and poetry environmental exhibition, Aldeburgh Gallery

2021 – The Rialto feature, edited by Degna Stone, poem ‘Patellofemale Syndrome’

2021 – The Lettering Arts Trust and Suffolk Poetry Society’s ‘On a knife edge’ feature, in exhibition and book

2021 – Composition performance art commission for ‘Up Close and Musical’ festival Shiry Rashkovsky (in process)

2021 – Collaboration with English National Opera assistant director Chris Hopkins’s musical show ‘Impressions’

2020 – Ipswich Arts poetry film feature on YouTube http://www.ipswich-arts.org.uk

2020 – Waveney & Blythe Arts commissioned poetry film on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=MKvpkA-ahjg&app=desktop

2020 – Raveningham Sculpture Trail exhibition

2020 – Seamus Heaney Centre poetry week participant - included on SHC podcast, and interviewed for SHC website

2020 – Artwork published in the May issue of Up the Staircase Quarterly

2020 – Solo visual art and music exhibition in collaboration with Mind charity (postponed indefinitely due to COVID-19)

2020 – Highly Commended Curator’s Award, Waveney & Blyth Arts ‘Sculpture in the Valley 2020’, Potton Hall (moved to 2021 due to COVID-19)

2020 – Butley Mills group exhibition at Grundisburgh House Art Gallery, Grundisburgh Open Gardens (moved to 2021 due to COVID-19)

2020 – Alde Valley Spring Festival, co-composed and performed music with Perhaps Contraption band clarinetist Charly Jolly for painter Emma Green in response to and with recorded birdsong, exhibited with Emma Green’s painting. Movement 1 by Dide, movement 2 by Charly, both movements improvised and performed by both https://www.aldevalleyspringfestival.co.uk/cherry-ingram-blossom-residency/

2020 – Course collaborator and tutor at AYM Beethoven Pastoral Project at Aldeburgh Music, Snape Maltings, exploring interdisciplinary artistic approaches to climate change

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